Formation of New Political Oppositions in Latvia
A Comparison of the Party System which has emerged in the 1990s to that of the 1920s and 30s with respect to continuity and change between the two
Democratic Periods in Terms of Political Contrasts and Oppositions.
Brita Skuland
Institute of Political Science University of Oslo 2005
PREFACE
At the time I began my thesis in 1992 at the Institute of Political Science, Oslo University, Latvia had restored independence and the first post-Soviet national elections were coming up.
My initial interest concerned the inter-war democracy and its collapse in 1934. I was advised to include the outcome of the first post-Soviet elections and draw a line between the inter-war party system and the new one. I chose it as my topic, which I resumed working with in late 2002. The fourth post-Soviet national election had been held in Latvia in autumn 2002; the same number of elections as before the subversion of democracy in 1934.
There were few sources about political history in Latvia available in Norwegian
libraries in the early 1990s. Norges forskningsråd (Norwegian Research Council) sponsored a stay in Riga to look for additional sources. I received invaluable help from the staff at Riga University’s newly founded Institute of Politology. I would name especially head of the institute, Einars Semanis, and professor Feliciana Rajevska, who largely arranged my stay and programme and were generally forthcoming. Directors of the Baltic Institute of Social Science (Baltijas Datu Nams) Aldis Paulins and his successor Brigita Zepa have been very helpful by providing results of post-election polls.
There are a number of people in Norway I want to thank for assisting my work in several ways; my supervisors Olav F. Knudsen, then director at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), research assistant Arne Kommisrud, and candidate for the doctorate, Herman Smith-Sivertsen, who kindly read and commented on the completed first draft in 2003. Herman generously let me use his private post-election poll material of 1998, prepared for his doctoral thesis. Thanks to Vigdis Nygaard and Torunn Hasler who carried out own research on Latvian topics in 1992 and 1993, for valuable discussions and cooperation.
Not least, thanks to my girlfriend Eva Kristin Friis who has contributed with her computer- technical skills for the multivariate analysis, and I have received additionally great assistance from Suzanne Schönkopf, former director of CAMO, the developer of the “Unscrambler”
statistical programme.
ABSTRACT
Latvia had a brief experience with democracy and party pluralism between 1920 and 1934 when an authoritarian regime took over. After restoration of Latvia’s independence in 1991, a large number of political groups and parties emerged, some re-emerged. The restoration of independence is formally based on the proclamation of independence 18 November 1918 and the Constitution of 1922, and citizenship was restored to Latvian citizens before the Soviet occupation in 1940 and their descendants. The question is: Do cleavages and contrasts that were underlying the structure of political opposition in the 1920s and 1930s re-emerge? Has nearly 50 years of Sovietization and communism, the absence of political contestation and independent political organizations, fundamentally changed the structure of cleavages and produced new conflicts? In the 1960s, Stein Rokkan and Seymour Martin Lipset found that party systems of Western democracies reflected fundamental cleavages that emerged in the course of history, and the party systems “froze” with the full extension of the franchise, leaving a stable system of political alternatives that reflected the most important historical contrasts.
This thesis identifies the most profound political contrasts in Latvia between the wars as national-cultural identity, class and urban/rural residence/economy. The society was based for centuries on a feudal social system where language and culture served as markers of one’s social class. Also, there were a distinct difference between Eastern and “Catholic” Latgale district and “Germanized” Latvia. Religion played an important political role in Latgale.
The most significant change in the current party system is the apparent absence of the class conflict in the aftermath of Communism. The Socialist Party is an overwhelmingly
“Russian” or “Non-Latvian” party. The development of a new social pluralism and social contrasts may lead to the re-emergence of the class conflict. The salient cleavage since 1990 has a strong ‘nationality’ component and relates to the struggle for restoration of
independence, the definition of citizens and the position of the Latvian language and culture.
The cleavage has its roots far down in history. The urban/rural contrast is another cleavage that has re-emerged, while the regional (Latgale) contrast seems to be both less significant, and has changed. In stead of “Catholic”, a stronger “Russian/Non-Latvian” component in the social structure and a poorer “Eastern” economy makes Latgale socially and politically still somewhat different from the three other districts.
CONTENTS
1 INTRODUCTION 7
1.1 Parties and Party Systems: Theoretical Aspects ... 8
1.2 The Case ... 9
1.2.1 Legal and Symbolic Continuity With the Past ... 9
2 NATION-BUILDING, DEMOCRATIZATION AND POLITICAL OPPOSITION... 13
2.1 Is the cleavage concept relevant? ... 13
2.2 Party System Perseverance and the Critics of the Freeze Proposition ... 14
2.3 Defending the proposition: “Continuity far outweigh Change”... 15
2.4 Literature and Definitions ... 16
2.4.1 Cleavages ... 18
2.4.2 Party Systems and Cleavages ... 18
2.4.3 Centre Versus Periphery (Cultural Cleavages) ... 19
2.4.4 Conflicts in the Labour and Commodity Market (Economic Cleavages) ... 19
2.5 ‘Discontinuous Democracies’: Survival of “Old” Oppositions ... 20
2.6 The Case ... 22
2.6.1 The Process of Democratization in the Latvian Area and Latvia: an Outline.. 23
2.6.2 Parties and Factions... 25
3 METHOD AND DEFINITIONS 26 3.1 Introduction ... 26
3.2 Operationalization of ‘Party’... 26
3.3 ‘Cleavage’ ... 28
3.4 Sources ... 29
3.4.1 Election Surveys 1993 - 2002 ... 31
3.4.2 A Multivariate Analysis of the 1998 Survey... 32
3.4.3 Interpretation of the Unscrambler Plots ... 33
4 THE TRANSFORMATION OF CLASS SOCIETIES INTO A NATION-STATE ... 34
4.1 Introduction ... 34
4.1.1 Modernization in the Baltic Provinces ... 34
4.2 A Double-Faced Stratification System... 35
4.2.1 Industrialization and Urbanization ... 37
4.2.2 Between Great Powers ... 38
4.2.3 Latgale: A Dominantly Catholic and Multiethnic Region ... 38
4.3 Ethnic- and Social Structure in the Interwar Period and Present ... 39
4.3.1 The Impact of Religion ... 40
4.3.2 Ethnic Cultural Autonomy ... 41
4.3.3 Ethnic Socio-economic Differentiation... 42
4.4 Occupations, Annexation and a New Demographic Structure... 43
4.4.1 Bolshevization and Russification ... 44
4.5 New Nation-Building Conflicts ... 45
4.5.1 Language and Education ... 45
4.5.2 Citizenship... 46
4.6 Non-Latvian Cities, Latvian Countryside ... 47
4.6.1 Effects of the Economic and Social Transition ... 47
5 POLITICAL PARTIES 49
5.1 Introduction ... 49
5.2 Parties and Political Conflicts in the 1990s... 50
5.2.1 The Citizenship Issue ... 50
5.3 Supreme Council Factions ... 52
5.3.1 Political-Ideological Designations ... 53
5.4 The Popular Front Faction Disintegrates ... 54
5.4.1 Popular Front’s “Offspring”... 55
5.4.2 Contrasts Between Nationalist Parties: Defining the ‘Nation’... 55
5.4.3 New Nation-Building Conflicts: Language and Education... 56
5.5 Development of Parties 1990-2003... 57
5.6 The Saeima 1993-2002... 60
5.6.1 The Centre ... 60
5.6.2 The Left ... 62
5.6.3 The Right... 64
5.7 The Beginning of Political Opposition in Latvia ... 67
5.7.1 Latvian Bourgeois Parties ... 67
5.7.2 Russian and German Reform Parties ... 68
5.7.3 The Revolutionary Movement and the Social Democratic Party... 69
5.7.4 The Farmers... 69
5.7.5 Violent Transition: War, Revolution and Civil War ... 70
5.8 Independent Latvia: New Conflicts, New Oppositions... 72
5.8.1 Latgale ... 73
5.8.2 A Sketch of the Political Blocks ... 73
5.9 The Agrarian Reform and New Peasant Parties... 74
5.10 The “Centre” – Radical Bourgeois, National-Democratic, National-Liberal ?... 75
6 THE VOTERS 78 6.1 Introduction ... 78
6.1.1 Voter Motivation ... 78
6.2 Socio-Structural and Cultural Factors ... 79
6.2.1 The Russian-Latvian Contrast ... 80
6.2.2 Urban – Rural Contrasts? ... 81
6.2.3 Regional Contrasts?... 84
6.2.4 Socio-structural Differences... 85
7 ANALYSIS 90 7.1 Introduction: Different Political Climate, Different Political Processes... 90
7.2 The Structure of Oppositions in the 1920s and 1930s ... 91
7.2.1 Different Ideological Positions of the “Deposed Regime” Parties ... 94
7.2.2 The structure of oppositions along basic dimensions 1920-1934 ... 96
7.2.3 The structure of oppositions along basic dimensions 1993-2002 ... 98
7.2.4 Towards a More Complex Structure of Oppositions ... 99
7.2.5 The National Right: Different Strategies of ‘National Survival’ ... 102
7.2.6 The Left ... 103
7.2.7 Integration or Ethnic Polarization ... 104
7.3 Party Continuity ... 105
7.3.1 Latvian Liberalism and “the Federative Idea” ... 108
7.4 A Multivariate Analysis of the 1998 Survey... 113
7.5 Conflicts and Contrasts: Final Comments... 121
8 CONCLUSIONS……… 123 REFERENCES ……….. 124 APPENDIX A: The Saeima 1922-1931... 131
APPENDIX B: 5th-8th Saeima 133
APPENDIX C: Post Election Surveys 1993 – 2002 ... 134
1. INTRODUCTION
The sudden collapse of communist regimes in East Europe and the Soviet Union 1989-1991 gave way to re-democratization of states, and in the case of Soviet union, the reestablishment of independent states. Several of these countries have formerly been independent democracies for a period of time, before the Second World War. Does earlier patterns of political
opposition repeat today in post-communist countries, or do communism, and sovietization, represent a significant break with past in terms of parties and party systems?
I have chosen Latvia as a case. I will compare Latvia’s party system structure in the pre-war period (1920-1934) and after the restoration of democracy and independence (1990- 2004). The huge social and demographic changes enforced upon Latvia during the Soviet annexation and occupation (1940-41/1944-1991) and Nazi occupation (1941-44) have produced a different social structure, new conflicts, as well as new kinds of political oppositions and alliances.
Last autumn, Latvia went to the polls to vote for or against membership in the European Union. 67 per cent of the voters (72.5 per cent participation) voted in support of membership. The same per cent of voters in Daugavpils, the main city of Latgale, voted against membership. Daugavpils voters were the “great exception” to the vote elsewhere in the country, Sweden’s news agency Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå (TT) reported on 21 September. The voting pattern fitted into the picture of post-Soviet political contrasts in Latvia, as will be described in this paper. Latgale stood out also in the 1920s and 30s as very different from germanized Latvia.
Through four national elections since the restoration of independence in 1991, conflicts related to the nation-building process have dominated the political agenda – the issues of citizenship, education and language rights are the most profoundly controversial, and have divided the voters according to national identity and mother tongue.
Pre-World War II era parties, which were restored in the early 1990s, have struggled to re-gain their positions within the Latvian party system. One is the Social Democratic Workers’ Party, which is the oldest and was the largest party in Latvia between the wars, and the most important opposition.1 The so-called “centre-right” parties – liberal and conservative - have formed the governments after 1993, as they also did in the 1920s and early 1930s. The
1 All political parties got prohibited after Karlis Ulmanis’ coup d’etat on 15 May, 1934. He suspended the Constitution and installed an autocratic regime that lasted until the Soviet invasion in June 1940.
dominant government party in the pre-war era, the Farmers’ Union, is back on the scene as well. It has been a member of several government coalitions, but not in a dominant position.
This chapter contains a brief presentation of the case and introduces some central theories and concepts regarding the study of parties and party systems. A more thorough presentation of the theory and concepts relevant for this paper is found in Chapter Two. Chapter Three describes the historical-sociological and statistical methods applied. Chapters four, five and six present the historical and socio-structural premises for the mobilization of political opposition and alignments in the Latvian area (4), political parties and conflicts (5), and the voters’ perspective (6). In the analysis, Chapter Seven, figures describing the party systems of the 1920s and 1990s will be introduced for comparison, and a multivariate analysis of
election survey data of 1998 (the seventh Saeima) has been carried out in order to identify significant and potential political contrasts among the voters.
Within the last page, this thesis should at least tentatively answer the following questions:
- Which conflicts and cleavages were decisive for the formation of political opposition in Latvia in the 1920s and 1930s?
- To what extent does conflicts and cleavages mobilized before 1934 express themselves in the formation of new oppositions in post-Soviet Latvian politics?
- Employing Stein Rokkan and Seymour Lipset’s cleavage concept and party system theory: Which are the strengths and weaknesses when applied in the case of Latvia?
1.1 Parties and Party Systems: Theoretical Aspects
The study of party system stability originates in the pre-war era, when several competitive democratic systems collapsed. In the 1920s and 30s, the focus shifted from the party
organization, and the role and functions of parties in mass democracies, towards inter-party dynamics and questions of stability and instability of party systems (Daalder, 1981). An aspect has been Stein Rokkan and Seymour Martin Lipset’s occupation with stable patters of cleavages and party system continuity, which led to their well-known hypothesis on “frozen”
party systems (Rokkan and Lipset, 1967). The concern here is the question of mobilized cleavages, their translation into the party system and survival within a context of party discontinuity.
1.2 The Case
This is a case study with a comparative aspect - the comparison of a single case at different times; that of a post-Communist, post-Soviet party system with that of a pre-war democracy.
The case is Latvia. My aim is to draw a few conclusions about continuity and discontinuity of political contrasts and cleavages, in a country where democratic contestation was interrupted for more than fifty years, and independent organizations were illegal.
On the renewal of independence in 1991, the pro-independence majority of the Supreme Council readopted sections of Latvia’s democratic constitution (Satversme) of 1922.2 On 6 July, 1993, the new national assembly (the fifth Saeima) fully reinstated the Constitution.3 The first post-Soviet, national elections in Latvia were held in June 1993. The fifth Saeima was, like the previous four, a unicameral body consisting of one hundred seats distributed by a proportional vote principle. The first Saeima got elected in 1922, the fourth in 1931. The distribution of mandates in 1993 and later has been made on the basis of five electoral districts, as in the inter-war years – the capital city Riga, the eastern district Latgale, southern Zemgale, western Kurzeme and northern Vidzeme.
Among the amendments made to the election law in 1993, one was especially important – the stipulation of a four per cent threshold (five per cent from 1995)4 to prevent extreme fragmentation which plagued the national assembly throughout the democratic period before Second World War (Vardys, 1978:66). With a country-wide requirement of minimum 4 and later 5 per cent of the votes, group-specific and district-specific parties are less likely to win seats in the national Saeima. Another amendment is the lowering of the voting age from 22 to 18 years. That increased the share of younger voters who are the most removed from the previous democratic period – three to four generations – and less likely to identify politically with a pre-war party.
1.2.1 Legal and Symbolic Continuity With the Past
The existence of the secret protocols in which Hitler “gave” the Baltic republics to Stalin in 1939 have become common knowledge. Moscow admitted the existence of the protocols in the summer of 1989 (Lieven, 1994:222), revealing that the annexation and incorporation of Latvia was illegal. By re-instating the pre-war national constitution (Satversme) and re- institutionalizing the Saeima as a direct continuation of the pre-war era, the revival of old
2 According to SC President Anatolijs Gorbunovs in a meeting with him at his office in May, 1993. Janis Ikstens (www.politics.lv/en/satvars/3.1/1.htm) says the complete Satversme was reinstated on 21 August, 1991.
3 According to Edite Alksne in an e-mail from the Saeima information office, January 2004.
4 Article 51 in “Law on Elections of the Fifth Saeima” (English translation), Riga 20. October, 1992.
organizations, societies and parties represents a legal and symbolic continuity between the 1918 republic and “post-communist” Latvia.5 To some of the nationalist opposition in the 1980s and 90s the proclamation of a new, ‘second’, republic would mean to acknowledge the Soviet occupation and annexation as legal. The conflict between adherents of the ‘second’
republic and the ‘first’ republic was the first major issue between the independence movements in 1988-90.
Irrespective of the legal and symbolic restoration of the republic, Latvia was a different country in 1990 than in 1940. Social and demographic conditions have severly changed following five decades of heavy industrialization, migration, deportations, collectivization, russification, and planned economy. In addition, the “repatriation” of the Baltic German population in 1939-41 and the Holocaust which cost the lives of probably over 90 per cent of the Latvian Jewish population, contributed to a fundamentally different ethnic structure. Ethnic Russians constituted the largest single minority in Latvia also before 1940, but its size in terms of numbers and proportion was far smaller than today. Moreover, non- Russian minorities living in the Latvian SSR chose, or were made, to adopt a Soviet identity and the Russian language (Chapter 4.5.2).
A consequence of the Renewal of independence was the restoration of citizenship to pre-war citizens and their descendants, which left 700.000-800.000 Soviet immigrants with USSR citizenship, and with an undecided legal status when the USSR was dissolved. The first major controversial issue following the restoration of independence was that of citizenship and naturalization; about procedures for accepting new citizens. The overwhelming majority of Latvian citizens have family roots in the country going back before 1940. About one in four descend from non-Latvian nationalities. The majority of non-citizens are Slavs, and the majority of the Slavs are Russian.
“Ethnicity”, or “nationality”, is a strong component in the most important post-Soviet conflicts in Latvia. The word refers to the presence of minorities; diaspora; with Russian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian and other origin. They are not minorities in the “indigenous”
meaning which is true for the Finno-Ugric-speaking Liv population. Most of Latvia’s so called “ethnic” minority groups have a reference country, for example Russians/Russia, Ukrainians/Ukraine and so on. Latvia, and the regions that were to become Latvia, have traditionally consisted of culturally mixed populations, of which the Latvian and the Liv (originally one of the tribes that were early settlers) have had no other reference country. One
5 Latvia was proclaimed independent on 18 November 1918. The Constituent Assembly got elected in 1920, and the Constitution (Satversme) adopted in 1922.
of many sources fuelling the “national reawakening” in the 1980s and inspired the national uprising against the USSR, was the fact that the Latvian proportion of the population was steadily shrinking, among other reasons due to migration from other Soviet republics. In 1989, just above half of the population was Latvian (Lieven, 1994:433). National-cultural conflicts have deep roots in Latvia.
National (cultural) identity became politically salient in the course of the extensive socio-structural transformations in the second half of the nineteenth century. Cultural identity was linked to social status. Social as well as cultural issues were dominant in the first years of independence (such as the Land Reform Act, Cultural Autonomy of the Minorities) (von Rauch, 1995:96). The national-cultural factor has been a predominant component within many big political issues and conflicts in Latvia in the nineties, and is linked to ideological contrasts and the deposed communist regime.
Traditional class conflicts seems not to play an independent political role today, although Hermann Smith-Sivertsen has found that socioeconomic contrasts are increasingly identifiable (Smith-Sivertsen, 1998:89, 105-107). The big political conflicts in the first decade following the restoration of independence have been related to Soviet rule, communism and its consequences. Trade, as well as foreign policy and defence are re-directed to the Western sphere, away from the East. This re-orientation, which was similar in the inter-war period, is expressed profoundly by Latvia’s early stated ambition for EU and NATO membership, two ambitions that materialized in 2004. The absence of a viable and multilateral security
arrangement before the Second World War was an achilles’ heal to a country in a region strategically desired by two imperial powers, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.6 NATO membership is an issue which has identified the confrontation line between the pro-
independence camp and the most staunch opposition of every government, the last-day defenders of the former regime, mostly Russian speakers.
Socio-economic and -structural realities are however different today compared with the inter-war period. Firstly, inter-war Latvia was dominantly agrarian, and industries were to large extent based on agrarian products (see von Rauch, 1995:137-138; Swettenham, 1981, Kahk/Tarvel, 1997:103-111). The majority of the population lived in the countryside, whereas
6 Fore more information about Latvia foreign politics and relations between the three Baltic states in the inter- war era: See Georg von Rauch (1970): The Baltic States. The Years of Independence, 1974/1995; I. Feldmanis, A. Stranga, M. Virsis: Latvia’s Foreign Policy and International Relations in late 1930’s . Riga, 1993 (in Latvian); Feldmanis, Stranga: The Destiny of the Baltic Entente. Riga, 1994.
today, the agrarian economy makes up only a small part of GNP. The majority of people live in urban areas, and a third of the total population in the capital Riga.
There is little left of the Latvian pre-war society, its demographic and socioeconomic structure, nor political landscape, at a glimpse. There is a methodological challenge to the comparison of two different historical periods, each having its “own” historical preconditions.
The presence of new political parties, however, does not mean that (emerging) cleavages are without roots much further back than the post-Second World War era.
2. NATION-BUILDING, DEMOCRATIZATION AND POLITICAL OPPOSITION The literature has primarily been concerned with the cases of ‘continuous’ democracies with regard to change and persistence of parties and party systems. Stein Rokkan and Seymour M.
Lipset include three ‘discontinuous’ cases in their classical comparison of party systems (1967), Germany, Italy and Spain. More recent ‘discontinuous’ democracies are in Central- and Eastern Europe, including former republics of the Soviet Union.
2.1 Is the cleavage concept relevant?
Employing the cleavage concept on post-communist cases is challenging, for at least two reasons: Firstly, the cleavage concept itself implies development over time concerning the emergence of economic interests, socio-structural and cultural identities, the organization and mobilization of interests, as well as the formation of stable systems of alignments and
opposition. In post-Communist countries this process described by Rokkan and Lipset had been going on for only 13-15 years by 2000. In the Latvian case we talk of 7 to 14 years, depending on whether one dates the beginning of the re-institutionalization of democracy back to the early environmentalist protests in 1986, to the Supreme Soviet elections in 1990 (the first and only free, competitive election to the SSR’s council), to 1991 when Latvia de facto restored independence, or to 1993, when the first post-communist national election was held. Whatever year chosen, the time span for mobilizing cleavages and establish a stable system of alignments and opposition is very short, and it’s even a question whether we can talk about a stable ‘party system’ at all in the Latvian case. Many parties have come and left the scene; and there are only three parties that have participated in every one of the four Saeimas since 1993.7 The three parties represent altogether only a very small proportion of Latvian voters.
Employing the cleavage concept on an “atypical” case like this may seem futile. On the other hand, the concept has been applied to even more difficult cases. Vicky Randall discusses the concept in relation to emerging democracies in Third World countries (Randall, 2001:242-259) where “infrequency and discontinuity of competitive party systems” represent just one of very many obstacles to the scholar. As Randall points out: there is no case of party politics without comparable tendencies (Rendall, 2001:252). Maurizio Cotta (1994:102) notes: “It must be said that Rokkan does not attempt to connect these cleavages to each
7 For Fatherland and Freedom (including LNNK), Concord for Latvia and the Socialist Party (/Equal Rights).
specific party but rather to categories of parties (conservative, liberal, agrarian, Christian etc.) It means that correspondence between cleavages and specific parties may be stronger or weaker. For instance, more than one socialist party could represent the workers’ side of the class cleavage. In short, a cleavage may be represented by two opposing parties, but also by different parties, or clusters of parties. Individual parties may come and go, but the actual confrontation line may not change.” Peter Mair (1997:28) makes a similar observation:
…when discussing the political alternatives deriving from cleavages in modern mass politics, and particularly when discussing the alternatives deriving from the class cleavage, we cannot simply speak of individual parties. Rather, we must be concerned with blocs or families of parties, and with the notion of parties which are cleavage allies as against those which are cleavage opponents.
2.2 Party System Perseverance and the Critics of the Freeze Proposition
A central theme to the discussion of party systems is Rokkan and Lipset’s proposition that European party systems have become stable structures of political alternatives (Rokkan and Lipset, 1967:50). Western party systems of the 1960s were more or less the same as forty years before. The major party alternatives seemed to have “frozen” in the wake of the extension of the suffrage during the mass mobilization phase. Their explanation for the
freezing is the narrowing of the support market (Rokkan and Lipset, 1967:51); or in the words of Cotta (1994:103): The parties that developed at the start of mass politics would leave little space for new parties at the moment when (male) suffrage was fully extended. The
stabilization of oppositions, or freezing, is linked to the party organizations which
“mobilize and integrate these new citizens (who are included in the electorate by the
extension of the suffrage, B.S.) and incalculate a set of enduring political identities.” (Mair, 1997:36). Giovanni Sartori interprets the freezing of the party system as almost solely a consequence of political organization, and parties as an ‘independent system of channelment’
(Sartori 1969:90). Challenging the proposition, scholars assert that even if it may have proved correct at the time of its formulation, the un-freezing of European party systems had already begun. A study which challenged the freeze proposition was published already before Rokkan and Lipset’s “Political Parties and Voter Alignments”, by Otto Kirchheimer, who in 1966 suggested that the era of the mass party was coming to an end and the ‘catch-all’ party was taking over. To increase its voter segment, the ‘catch all’ party loosen the tie to its core electorate. Media and new sources of income become more important than memberships.
The ‘mass party’ concept was originally used by Maurice Duverger (1954) to explain the process of mass democratization. Originally a phenomenon on the political left among the
working class, the ‘mass party’ mobilized its numerical superiority against the numerically weaker, but financially much stronger (cadre) parties of the old elite. Duverger predicted that other parties would have to copy the mass party model to survive. Duverger’s ‘Mass Party’ is the type of party closest to the one defined by Rokkan and Lipset . Apparently, in the late 1960s, Rokkan and Lipset described the past, while Kirchheimer looked to the future.
A premise for the emergence of the ‘catch-all’ party is the a decline of traditional class contrasts and -identities (Dalton, Scott and Flanagan 1984), as well as a de-ideologization fed by economic prosperity in the post-World War II West. The mobilizing potential of the traditional class cleavage has waned. Ronald Inglehart (1977) identifies a value shift among voters, from ‘materialist’ to ‘post-materialist’, and the mobilization of a post-materialist cleavage (Mair, 1997) consisting of several new issues (environment protection, women’s rights etc.) According to Inglehart's observations, new value conflicts have emerged alongside socio-structural determinants or even replaced the latter as motivation for party choice. At the political level, the new issues have promoted new parties alongside the old (Green parties and
“the New Left”, for example) or become adopted by existing parties. A third aspect to
political change is voter volatility, as the parties loose their ties to their core electorate, which entails an evaporation of party-voter loyalties.
2.3 Defending the proposition: “Continuity far outweigh Change”
An indication of de-freezing of a party system is a lower predictability of the outcome of elections and especially government negotiations, according to Peter Mair (2001:39).
Defining party systems by “their patterns of competition”, borrowed from Giovanni Sartori, Mair asserts it is at this level predictions are likely to apply (Mair, 2001:39) The crucial variable in question is the interaction at the party system level.
In a response to the criticism of and objection to the relevance of the freeze
proposition, Mair (1997) argues that the case of the critics has not yet been made. “I contend that the freezing hypothesis remain largely valid”, he asserts in the first chapter of “Party System Change”: “The evidence of long-lasting continuities in party systems far outweigh the more striking and more immediate evidence of change” (Mair, 1997:3). The average level of aggregate volatility from 1945 till 1989 is just 8.7 (Mair, 1997:80ff), meaning that the net shift is less than one tenth of the votes from one election to the next, indicating a net stability of 91 per cent. Mair also concludes on the basis of the index that net volatility was even higher in the period studied by Rokkan and Lipset (1945-1965) than from 1966 to 1989.
Much of the electoral change observed especially in the 1970s and 1980s happened within
blocs of parties which are allies on the same side of the relevant cleavages, and that leaves the fundamental structure more or less intact, according to Mair. New conflicts replace or add to the old, and constitute cleavages that define lasting oppositions or alignments. It means that the old left to right-dimension, which was originally based on social class contrast, in the course of time will consist of many more and different types of conflicts. Inglehart’s identification of post-material values as opposed to material values is important, but the emergence of post-materialistic values does not necessarily lead to a decline, or any significant decline, in the old cleavages - or any significant change within party systems.
Seymour M. Lipset makes a similar assessment as Mair when he comments on the discussion of post-material value systems and the issue of a third, “Post-Materialistic”
revolution (Lipset, 2001:6):
Given all the transformations in Western society over the twentieth century, it is noteworthy how little the formal party systems have changed, though their programmatic content is different.
Peter Mair emphasizes the significance of party organizations’ adaptability as an important factor explaining why West-European post-war party systems have survived, mostly with only minor changes, if any. The question is whether the structure of oppositions can survive the discontinuity of political parties, as in Latvia.
2.4 Literature and Definitions
The organization of politics into parties, the electoral system’s impact upon party systems, and the stabilizing/destabilizing effects of party systems are topics that have engaged political scientists for the last century. A political party, in the context of mass democracy, can be defined as organizations whose goal is the capture of public office in electoral contestation with one or more other parties (Kuper and Kuper, 1985). A party is, moreover, an organized group of people sharing common policy preferences and usually a general ideological position (…) that seeks, or has, political power.” (Robertson, 1993:370).
With the development of mass politics, the ‘mass party’ emerged with the ambition to secure a maximum of votes as a product of the extension of the suffrage to all adult male citizens - meaning the inclusion of the working class. According to Duverger (1954), the mass party emerged with the political organization of the working class and the necessity to use manpower in the political struggle against the financially stronger old elites and bourgeoisie.
Whether the emerging mass democracies would have two-party or multi-party systems, would depend decisively on the choice of electoral system. Majority vote would favour two-party
systems; proportional representation would favour multi-party systems. The size of the party system would have different strengths and weaknesses. A two-party system is usually seen as more stabilizing and “efficient” than a multi-party system, because it will produce majority governments, whereas multi-party systems usually would be regarded as more representative as the number of parties will be three or more. Jean Blondel elaborated Duverger’s two-party versus multiparty definition into a typologoization in which the number of parties were added the strength of parties, their ideological position, type of organization and leadership.
The organization of mass parties and elaboration of functional voting systems have contributed to the stabilization of the political system in most Western democracies, as political conflict was set over issues within the state order, and not over the system itself.
However, irrational aspects of party pluralism could de-stabilize rather than stabilize the political system. Giovanni Sartori described the destructive mechanisms of what he called
‘extreme’ or ‘atomized’ pluralism, one of seven types of party systems he identified (Sartori, 1976:125). In the case of extreme pluralism (more than five relevant parties), the number of parties does not alone decide the workings of the party system. Sartori introduced ‘ideological distance’ between parties as a measure. In the case of extreme pluralism, none of the relevant parties are dominant, and the presence of anti-system parties (anti-democratic parties)
contributes to undermine the political system. The Weimar Republic is the profound “model”
for the concept of atomized pluralism, where a great number of parties made governing practically impossible, and the ideological distance was the most extreme, with two anti- system parties; the national socialists and communists; at each opposing end of the ideological spectrum. The Baltic democracies made similar experiences between the wars. Party
democracy was suspended one by one; in Latvia in 1934; and substituted by autocratic, nationalistic regimes. The atomization of Weimar Germany’s and the Baltic party systems was related to flaws in the electoral systems which were without defence (threshold) against the patchworks of contrasts existing in these countries.
A sociological alternative to the numerical party system theory was presented by Stein Rokkan and Seymour M. Lipset’s comparative historical-sociological approach in 1967, identifying basic conflicts and cleavages at the foundation of West-European party systems.
They found a different aspect to stability; the relatively unchanged nature of the structure of oppositions as a reflection of decisive conflicts in the wake of nation-building and mass- democratization. The approach made possible comparative analyses of variations between democratic party systems related to sequences of democratization and the political relevance of certain historical conflicts and cleavages above other.
2.4.1 Cleavages
The process of nation-building is central to Rokkan and Lipset’s discussion of the formation of territorial and cultural cleavages and political opposition in Europe (Rokkan and Lipset, 1967). Industrialization and economic modernization created the basis of new economic contrasts which usually cut across the established cultural and territorial cleavages, and thereby reduced potentially polarizing conflicts. According to Rokkan and Lipset, the mass party functions as a mediator between the citizens and the state, expressing contrasts in the socio-cultural structure, channelling demands and, to gain political power, force the
spokesmen of contrasting interests to compromise. The political party is a ‘mediator’ between the state and the citizens, and between divergent interests. Rokkan and Lipset defined party system according to ‘cleavages’ which translated from the social structure (the voters) into the party system. Their concern was parties as ‘agencies of mobilization’ which aggregated and translated social and cultural conflicts along a set of dimensions rooted in critical historical conflicts. In their perspective, the stability of the political system was ensured by the
crosscutting nature of cultural and economic conflict dimensions and identities, whereas the risk of extreme conflict and instability would appear in the case of parallel dimensions.
Stein Rokkan and Seymour Martin Lipset made this observation with regard to Western party systems in the 1960s:
The party systems of the 1960s reflect, with few but significant exceptions, the cleavage structures of the 1920s [....] the party alternatives, and in remarkably many cases the party
organizations, are older than the majorities of the national electorates. (Rokkan and Lipset, 1967).
The basis of the continuity they observed was a fully enfranchised (male) electorate, with only few restrictions, such as age limits. The “space” that represents a possibility to mobilize new voter segments, had been exhausted. Thus, the system of cleavages represented by the parties that made up the party system was connected to social and cultural contrasts and conflicts that already existed and were mobilized in the wake of the reformation, nation- building processes and the industrial revolution.
2.4.2 Party Systems and Cleavages
Rokkan and Lipset identified historical, cultural and socioeconomic conflicts that proved critical during the development and consolidation of the nation state. These conflicts led to the formation of political oppositions, representing social cleavages. A ‘cleavage’ is defined as a
cluster of conflicts dividing the population: “It designates a division between groups within the society, based on some more or less fixed attribute: One can have cleavages along lines of class, religion, language, race or even, conceivably, gender. The patterns of social cleavages, their interrelationships, salience, number and nature, used to determine the battle lines of competitive politics and generally influence the stability and functioning of the political system.” (Robertson, 1993:72).
2.4.3 Centre Versus Periphery (Cultural Cleavages)
Four historically derived cleavages, two cultural and two economic; are identified by Rokkan and Lipset: A territorial and a religious-secular cleavage originates in the National-
Democratic (French) revolution, and develops in the early stages of nation-building. (Rokkan and Lipset, 1967). The first cleavages represent critical conflicts between the centralizing nation-building elite and local elites in the periphery of a state in defence of their traditional local power. It is a conflict over territorial control and would at some point produce parties with strong regional identity in opposition to the nation-building centre, and/or religious parties and/or parties of cultural minorities. In Roman-Catholic countries, Catholic Parties usually formed instead of secular bourgeois parties.
2.4.4 Conflicts in the Labour and Commodity Market (Economic Cleavages)
Two cleavages emerged in the area of labour and economy in the wake of modernization and industrialization, as a consequence of the industrial revolution. Rokkan and Lipset identify two critical conflicts; one in the commodity market between the interests of the rural-based primary economy and the urban secondary economy, the new industries. The second conflict is in the labour market between owners and tenants, employers and employees. These cleavages would, usually at some time after the mobilization of the cultural/territorial cleavage, produce bourgeois parties representing the interests of the conservative urban bourgeoisie (usually capital owners), labour parties representing manual workers, and
sometimes but not always; parties representing agricultural interests, expressing the conflict in the commodity market between producers and consumers, between the primary and secondary economy.
All cleavages are not mobilized with equal strength, and different types of conflict may become dominant in different parts of a country. For example, Rokkan describe the
differences within Norway: South-West Norway traditionally consisted of socially egalitarian societies where the dominant conflicts were found along the territorial-cultural axis (issues
like alcohol consumption and moral values were profound). Class conflicts, between employers and employees along the functional axis, have traditionally not generated much support for the Labour party in South-West Norway. In Northern Norway, however, class contrasts have traditionally run deep and subdued the territorial-cultural cleavage. Fishermen and peasants in Northern Norway were likely to vote for the Labour party, whereas fishermen and farmers in the south and west of Norway were likely to vote for a non-socialist party, either the Christian People’s Party or the Centre Party representing rural interests – both representing a so called “counter-culture” – the centre-periphery conflict.
2.5 ‘Discontinuous Democracies’: Survival of “Old” Oppositions
Discussing Rokkan and Lipset’s theory of ‘frozen oppositions’ in relation to re-emerging democracies in Eastern and Central Europe, Maurizio Cotta puts forward a set of hypotheses, or premises, which may help predict the chance of survival of the old party system in a
‘discontinuous democracy’ (Cotta, 1994:99ff). In the Latvian case, an immediate conclusion, based on Cotta’s listed premises, seems to be that it is unlikely to find any high degree of correspondence between the new party system and the inter-war party system. Rokkan and Lipset (1967) sees the socio-political entity as a marketplace where the voters tend by buy the goods only once. With the full extension of the suffrage; when the last segment of the
population gets enfranchised; there is no space for new parties, as there are no new voting segments to mobilize.
The situation is different in the situation of discontinuity. Cotta is concerned with whether old or new parties will fill the new political space (Cotta, 1994:102). Cotta suggests that the more space not filled by (or possible to be filled by) the former democratic political elite/parties, the lesser the possibility that the old party system will re-emerge. Table 2-1 shows a number of factors that may give indications about Latvia’s “position” with respect to the six hypotheses and the “continuity potential” of political parties:
Table 2-1: Step One of Maurizio Cotta’s explanatory model “Weight of Legacies”: Conditions affecting the probable survival of the party system of the past. The information about Latvia is added by the author of this thesis (Cotta, 1994:107-110).
HYPOTHESES Latvia: Weaker chance of party system continuity after Soviet communism
Latvia: Greater chance of party system continuity after Soviet communism
“The less complete the extension of the suffrage and/or the less complete the mobilization of the mass electorate the greater the chances of weak continuity.”
Adult suffrage from 21 years (Constitution of the Republic of Latvia, Section 2,
Paragraphs 8-9), high degree of mobilization.
“The lower the degree of institutionalization of parties and the degree of partyness of political life, the weaker the chances of continuity.”
Only the Farmers’ Union and the Social Democrats remained of the parties of 1918- 1920. The other parties dissolved or merged (von Hehn 1966:10-11 describes many of the political groups as without political goals.
“To the extent that sections of the party system have undergone a significant decline already during the first democratic experience the chances of continuity are diminished.”
The Latvian election law provided for a political system with many parties, which led to fragmentation and instability, with frequent government turnovers (14 governments in 14 years, according to Vardys 1978:67, see also von Hehn 1966:10-11).
The two larger parties, in government and opposition lost support from election to election (von Rauch 1995: 93,95-97).
Political parties dissolved following Karlis Ulmanis’ take-over in 1934 (von Rauch 1995:146, von Hehn 1966:19).
“The chances of revival for parties that have been involved in supporting the authoritarian take-over are weaker after the fall of this regime, and the all-over continuity of the party system is reduced.”
The Latvian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), was outlawed in 1920-1940. In 1991, the Latvian Communist Party was again prohibited, but participates in the Saeima under different names – Equal Rights and The Socialist Party (Kalnins 1971:295.313; von Rauch 1995:95;
Vardys 1978:67; von Hehn 1966:11; Lieven 1994:255,290-91).
“The longer the non-
democratic regime the weaker the continuity with the democratic past.”
Three generations, 59 years, between Ulmanis’
coup d’etat and the 1993 elections.
“The ‘stronger’ the non- democratic regime, i.e. its mobilizing potential, social impact, institutionalization, the lesser the chances of continuity with the past.”
Authoritarian system since 1934 until 1940, no parties,
totalitarian system 1940-41, 1944-1989/91, strong social, economic, cultural and
institutional control. No party contestation, one party.
In the case of Latvia, Cotta’s list of hypotheses suggest a strong ‘discontinuity factor’, meaning the space for new parties is large, and the chance that “old” parties will return and re-take a position in the new party system, is weak. However, Cotta does not include social cleavages and “critical conflicts” in his discussion which is solely about the survival of parties and not cleavages. Thus he does not discuss the topic of whether new parties may emerge to express cleavages that are essentially of older origin.
There is one important point to make in the case of Latvia: The elite as well as the electorate is completely renewed. The youngest person who voted for the fourth Saeima in 1931, would have been 84 years old when the 5th Saeima got elected in 1993. This may suggest that the link to pre-war party organizations, in terms of loyalty as well as identification with a “historic” party, is weak.
2.6 The Case
The Latvian pre-war parliament remained fragmented throughout the democratic period, not least due to the lack of election threshold. The Saeima’s 100 seats were distributed among up to around 30 parties, none of them dominant enough to form a majority government alone.
For discussing the party system structure, I will define blocks of parties according to categorizations employed in the literature (Chapter Six and Appendix A). The pre-war political landscape was dominated by a conservative agrarian party, opposed by a social democratic party, with a middle ground of national liberal parties which found support largely among Latvian intellectuals (von Rauch, 1995:91). In addition, there were a number of parties representing the nationalities; profoundly German, Russian, Jews and Poles, and there were several parties emerging from the Latgale region.
The post-Soviet Saeima has not been as fragmented as the pre-war Saeima. By 1993 an election threshold was set at four per cent and increased to five before the next election two years later. The Latvian Saeima since 1993 has consisted of Latvian parties with a dominant “nationalist” or nation-building agenda, parties with a predominantly
socioeconomic agenda, and opposed by Russophone-friendly parties (Smith-Sivertsen,
1998:92). No party has been dominant enough to form a single-party government. Repeatedly, coalitions have been forged between nationalists and socioeconomic (liberal, conservative and social democratic) parties. The current (post-Soviet) parties and party structure reflects some very profound conflicts that relates to the years of sovietization and renewed independence (Smith-Sivertsen, 1998), yet some themes are not new. A struggle for independence preceded the founding of the first independent Latvian state. The former “ruling nationality” (German
Balts) had to adapt to a new social position in a society where they no longer enjoyed special privileges. Today, Latvian Russians are trying to adapt to a “minority” position, to many Russians an inferior position due to the dominant position they held as the core nationality within the Soviet empire (Hasler, 1996). Old types of conflicts and contrasts appear to have re-emerged within a different context.
2.6.1 The Process of Democratization in the Latvian Area and Latvia: an Outline The processes of democratization that was involved in most of the cases studied by Rokkan and Lipset were processes of more or less gradual inclusion of new oppositions and gradual extending of the franchise. The Latvian case is a different one, concerning the pace of
democratization in 1918-20 as well as in 1989-91. Within few years the old political systems collapsed (1917) or was defeated (1989-1990).
The former collapsed into a civil war between revolutionaries, nationalists; fighting for independence; and remaining German forces supporting the German Balts. Full franchise was introduced by the constituent assembly in 1920-22, as well as an election law which laid down nearly no restrictions as to participation and led to “an almost unrestricted reign by the parliament” (von Hehn, 1966:10). The democratization process had basically begun in the Baltics the 1870s with the introduction of municipal reforms which enfranchised some Latvian men, big property owners. Only 2 per cent of the Riga residents belonged to the bourgeoisie; members of the guilds; and were entitled to vote before the reforms, and the majority were German Balts (Haltzel, 1981:137-138). With the reform, instead of a city council and two guilds a municipal assembly would be elected by all male subjects of the Russian empire 25 years and older who paid taxes on property or trade and were not in arrears on tax payment. There were three categories of voting lists. The first included the wealthiest men whose taxes taken together made up one third of the total taxes. The second category included moderately wealthy men whose taxes made up another one third, and the third included all other tax payers. The size of the assemblies varied from city to city, and the assembly elected in Riga was the largest, consisting of 72 representatives (Haltzel, 1981:137).
Each category elected equal numbers of representatives, which means that the biggest taxpayers, who were numerically fewer than the second and third category, elected relatively more representatives, and similarly the second category of moderately wealthy taxpayers elected relatively more representatives than the third category. The weight of the ballot, thus, was in favour of the wealthier individuals.
The upheavals of 1905 forced the Czar to establish a representative institution, the Imperial Duma, and political parties were legalized for the first time ever in Russia, between 1905 and 1907. The Duma was a pseudo-democratic institution which had no real say, yet the very existence of the Duma, as well as the preceding municipal reforms, introduced an
element of political contestation, organization and participation in the society.
The Soviet communist regime was forced to allow democratic contestation in the late 1980s as the old regime was crumbling (Lieven, 1994:222ff). Soviet leader Michail
Gorbachev introduced “Glasnost”, which was an attempt to move the USSR slightly in a liberal-democratic direction, one step being an amendment of the USSR Constitution that opened up for the election of a new, representative body, the Congress of People’s Deputies, in 1989, in the first competitive elections in the USSR (since 1922). Unlike the Imperial Duma, the Congress of People’s Deputies possessed real powers, electing the new Supreme Soviet, which in turn elected the president. The same year, the Latvian Supreme Soviet
replaced the Soviet constitution with national laws which then took supremacy, and the March 1990 elections to the Latvian Supreme Council were held in a democratic fashion. The
Popular Front Movement, which gathered non-communist, pro-independence candidates, emerged as a majority winner. The new Supreme Council declared on 4 May a transitional period to restore independence, and a referendum on the issue of national independence in March the next year produced a considerable majority in favour of independence. De facto independence was declared immediately following the failed coup d’etat in August 1991. In June 1993 the first national elections were held, but due to restrictions on citizenship, nearly 30 per cent of the population was without the right to vote, mostly residents of non-Latvian origin. Citizenship was restored to inhabitants that were, or descended from, citizens of the pre-war republic.
In the Soviet Union, participation in elections was desired by the authorities, but as an act of symbolic confirmation of the ruling Communist party. The ‘party’ was neither
“representative” nor “responsive”, which in a democratic context is a crucial role of parties (chapter two).
The transition to democracy briefly described above underlines the very different nature of democratization experienced by post- as well as pre-Soviet countries like Latvia, compared to most of Western democracies, and it is likely to have an impact upon the representativeness and responsiveness of parties, as well as the mobilization of cleavages. In most Western democracies, the formation of cleavages, their mobilization and political expression developed over a longer time. It may take a longer time for a democracy
experiencing a rapid transition to develop a stable pattern of political cleavages. Herman Smith-Sivertsen points to the problem: “..it can be argued that the short time span and the instability of the party system make possible only the observation of political divisions of temporary nature, not cleavages” (Smith-Sivertsen, 1998:89).
The Latvian party system between the World Wars reflected insufficient national integration as well as insufficiently developed political alignments. Social conflicts and personal contradictions were politically transformed into the national assembly, the Saeima, without the “filter” of a threshold. The party system must be defined by concepts covering
‘categories’ of parties reflecting socio-structural, cultural as well as ideological differences.
The current party system is pluralist but not nearly as fragmented as between the wars. Less fragmentation results partly from the election thresholds of 4 and later 5 per cent. There is furthermore an assumed possibility that five decades of occupation may have effected a certain social, ethnic and territorial “integration” or “standardization”.
2.6.2 Parties and Factions
In the Latvian context, parties exists along with ‘factions’ which is the formal designation for the various groups and alliances within the national assembly, the Saeima. A ‘faction’ does not necessarily correspond to a parliamentary party group, as it may be made up by an
alliance of two or more parties. If the membership of a faction drops beyond a certain number (5), the faction must dissolve, and its remaining members (if any) become independent
deputies. The factions may change from Saeima to Saeima and even between elections (see chapter 5.5, figure 5.1).
Parties have proved to be short lived as well, and only very few have survived as organizations without any representation in the Saeima or in municipalities. Some parties appear to serve simply as “election instruments”, and it is questionable whether all the basic functions of a party, according to the definition above, is really fulfilled. Yet they qualify formally as parties according to the requirements given in the election law. When the goal of
“election parties” fail; to enter or re-enter the Saeima; the party is likely to dissolve. This is an aspect to parties in Latvia and may be attributed to the “shortcut” transition to democracy which has shortened the time to establish viable parties with a firm electoral basis. The role of parties as stabilizers of the state system therefore remains an open question in this case, at the time.
3. METHOD AND DEFINITIONS 3.1 Introduction
A challenge to the study of the party system in Latvia is how to define the relevant parties.
The social structure is currently in a process of change that have impact upon the voters’
political preferences as well as the formation of new parties. The operationalization will have to include any group, formal party or alliance which at one point or another have become voted into the Saeima in national elections. It is the Saeima factions (Parliamentary Groups), i.e. the elected representation of parties, groups and alliances, which is the empirical focus, and the corresponding party organizations.
The current Latvian election law requires that a list of candidates be submitted 1) by “a legally registered political organization (party); 2) jointly by two or more legally registered political organizations (parties); 3) by a legally registered association of political
organizations (parties) (The Saeima Election Law, Article 9). The Latvian Election Law thus establishes the party as the hub of political participation and democratic contestation. The law required other types of political organizations, movements such as LNNK and the Popular Front, to formally register as parties in the 1990s.
3.2 Operationalization of ‘Party’
The pre-war party-system consisted of numerous parties, which has become categorised by historians and is the point of departure for describing the important and relevant conflicts and cleavages in the inter-war party system (see Appendix A). Descriptions and categorizations are presented by Albert Zalts (1926), Alfred Bilmanis (1928 and later), Agnis Balodis (1990), Georg von Rauch (1995) and Jürgen von Hehn (1966) as the main sources concerning the inter-war years. I have also basically adopted the ideological categories employed by von Rauch (1995:91): The ‘Left’ (Marxist-based Social Democrats and Communist groups), the
‘Centre’ (also referred to as liberals, whereas I prefer the designation ‘radical-bourgeois’
which refers to the non-Marxist social radicalism of the urban intelligentsia), and the ‘Right’
which refers to conservative and moderate bourgeois parties.
The are other relevant categories of parties in the pre-war Saeima not reckoned separately by von Rauch: Agricultural, regional (Latgalian) and parties of other Latvian national subgroups (“minorities”). Religious parties were mostly a “sub-division” among the other categories, and did not represent a particular “front” - with exception of catholic parties in Latgale with its distinctly catholic Latvian culture. Religious parties expressed a variety of
faiths among different national (“ethnic”) subgroups, such as Russian Orthodox, Old Believers and Jews. I have defined confessional parties as belonging to different blocs of parties, and not separately.
A question is whether agricultural parties actually should be seen as one single bloc representing peasants and farmers, or whether the parties rather belong to different blocs, representing different cleavages, for example as opponents along the class cleavage (see von Hehn, 1966:11-12). The old gentry, the independent farmers and the peasants were socially divided by class lines, and the parties of peasants (smallholders) and farmers represented the interests of different social segments.
The relationship between the socio-structural basis and the parties/categories of parties of the first democratic period are not directly, statistically, established by surveys. The link is presumed, based on information by secondary sources. For example, that the party Farmers’
Union represented the interests of the landowning farmers in the pre-war party system, and the national liberal/radical parties were based on the urban Latvian intelligentsia (von Rauch, 1995:91-93).
For the post-Soviet elections, I have been able to use election survey results (1993, 1995, 1998, 2002) made available by LASOPEC (Latvian Social Research Centre)/Baltic Data House, and Herman Smith-Sivertsen (1998). The survey results indicate possible relationships between certain variables describing the voters and party preference.
LASOPEC/Baltic Data House have been engaged in relation with social and socio-political projects in Latvia like the extensive “New Baltic Barometer” surveys by professor Richard Rose and the Centre for the Study of Public Policy, University of Strathclyde. Scholars of Latvian topics at the Institute of Political Science at Oslo University have collaborated with LASOPEC/Baltic Data House on several occasions as well. The methods employed by the research centre are well established.
For the 1998 election, underlying data for the survey was made available8 and were used for a multivariate analysis presented in chapter seven. I will explain the method in relation to the analysis later in this chapter and also in Chapter Seven.
Regarding the years 1993 to 2002/03 the thesis focus mainly on the parties that make up a more or less stable basis of the democratic contestation or were significant within one or more of the Saeimas. Although election alliances are shifting and instrumental, most often
8 By Hermann Smith-Sivertsen, Institute of Political Science, University of Oslo.
created for one purpose only: To secure enough votes to pass the 5 per cent threshold (1993: 4 per cent), I see alliances as an expression of political closeness.
Finally, names of parties in the inter-war era may be different from one source to another. The reasons appear to be a) different translations of the name from Latvian or Russian to English or German, or that b) small parties frequently changed name or
transformed into new parties. When there have been a problem, I have tried to identify parties by the name of the party leaders, and if possible by a mouthpiece newspaper or publication.
3.3 ‘Cleavage’
Henry Valen (1981) explain ‘cleavage’ as referring to contrasts or conflicts of the political struggle. The concept has a sociological and/or political component. The social component, or the definition employed by sociologists, describes conflicts that originate in the social
structure; between different ethnic groups, between different religious groups, within the labour market between workers and employers or between agricultural and industrial
interests. (Valen, 1981:12) Political scientists emphasise the political component. ‘Cleavage’
means “ideological struggles or contrasts” which are related to certain conflict issues. Valen mentions the left-right contrast as a well-known example. An ideological or political cleavage may designate certain ideologies, but more often cleavage consists of a number of conflict issues that are tied together or connect ideologically (Valen, 1981:13).
Not all conflicts mobilize cleavages. As mentioned in Chapter Two, the politization and mobilization of cleavage is related to critical conflicts. The conflicts (or ‘cluster of
conflict issues’) have a profound quality, such as the conflict over territorial control expressed for example by ‘state versus church’ (secular versus religious control) or by the tug of war between a centralizing culture and peripheral cultures.
The definition of ‘cleavage’ employed in this thesis involves both the political and socio-structural level. The political level is operationalised basically as the factions within the Saeima in the years 1990-2003 and the corresponding parties, and as the parties and
categories of parties within the Constitutional Assembly in 1920-22 and the Saeimas 1922-34.
The social structure is defined in two ways: As descriptive categories taken from the literature (‘peasants’, ‘farmers’/’landowners’, ‘workers’, ‘middle class’/‘middle strata’,
‘bourgeoisie’= wealthier strata, as well as cultural designations like ‘Latgalian’, ‘Baltic German’ etc.). Secondly, the social structure is defined by the sets of variables describing voters (respondents) in the election surveys. The variables are not exhaustive, and the survey may not include all relevant variables. However, the selection of variables should be regarded
